


At the End of Summer

by grandtozier



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, Repressed kids, Rip to the real babey, We're gay AND depressed, a collection of summers, a retelling of sorts, dont look too far into it, hella angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 21:36:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21168251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandtozier/pseuds/grandtozier
Summary: They're constant. Every summer and every possible moment: Richie and Eddie. And the absence doesn't go unnoticed.Alternatively: recounting summers that Eddie reserved for Richie





	At the End of Summer

Summer.

It began with him as it would also end.

Richie makes a joke and almost as soon as the words roll off his tongue Eddie is covering a laugh with faux annoyance. It isn't real. He's never mad. It's just, summer only started and he doesn't wanna give him the satisfaction. He has to look away. Bill continues with the barrens. Eddie doesn't realize what it all means until he almost dies.

Summer.

They're biking with their friends. Freshly fifteen, sun on their skin, the feeling of invincibility flowing through their veins. It spills when knees hit the pavement at the speed of teenage impulse. They're all on him, worried. He's immediately yelling. Dumbass. And he only means it a little bit, because he was already tending to the wounds before the word slipped through his teeth. Richie smiles. Eddie burns.

Summer. 

The house suffocates him in spite of the emptiness. Two people isn't enough, yet it's too many. He can't breathe. His asthma comes in the form of a mother too torn to notice his a living person. Sick, or so she says. He doesn't believe it. She drowns the house with noise that can't fill the empty space they don't mention. She couldn't possibly hear the rustle of the leaves or the knocking on a window of a teenage boy trying to worm his way in. He did. Richie makes a show of falling on the bedroom floor. Eddie feels too tired to play a part. They follow a comforting pattern made for two. Elbows inching closer on a bed made for one, Eddie reads comics they know by heart. Richie secretly finds entertainment in the face a boy he'd known his entire life. He leaves shortly after spider-man looses Gwen Stacy.

Summer.

He's talking about girls. They're both supposed to like girls. He can't like girls. Richie falters, the slightest bit of uncomfortably slipping through. The buzzing feeling in that started in Eddie's stomach continues to flood his body. Don't let it out. Richie mentions something about Eddie's mom and he misses his cue. They fall out of beat. He can tell something is off. Eddie wants to kiss the worry off of Richie's lips. He wants to kiss him. He wants him to stop talking about the girl that was in his AP chemistry class. They have a year left before they leave, but he can't force the phrase caught in his throat. The heat on his skin is unbearable, and he itches. It's too much. Richie is too much. He nods along.

Summer.

Photos are boxed away with memories he'd soon forget. The promise of college should come with a parental escape; he wasn't so lucky. He cries in his pillow the night before he leaves, liquid cowardice. They all meet the next day, one by one, they all trickle in, one last adventure for the neighborhood misfits. They leave, shadows following closely the same way Eddie used to. Things can't always stay the same, though they promise to stay in touch. Richie stays longer. A wicked smile on his lips, foreign tears in his eyes. Eddie can't make out what's really behind them. They stand awkwardly, hesitantly, until someone moves, skin brushing skin. He tells himself to make a move. He moves to New York leaving everything in Derry in a box. It quickly gathers dust.

Summer.

He's asked about his childhood. He can't answer. He's baffled. Myra comes like a package wrapped with a neat little bow forced on him by his mother. The boys he's surrounded by catch his eye, but it doesn't feel right. Maybe he's denying himself, but they all seem empty. He knows something's missing, but can't figure out what. On the edge of a vision curls and glasses dance into view before being snapped away. Someone feels his forehead; he can't tell if it's his mother or Myra. The act begins then follows him until reality can't be ignored.

Summer.

The phone call ends with the screeching of metal against metal. He doesn't care. The ghosts followed him. He's already on his way to Maine. First love feels like having a stake dragged through his heart when he experiences it again at the ripe age of forty. He tries to not act like a schoolgirl in the middle of a rundown Chinese restaurant, but he hasn't felt anything since he was eighteen. Richie is crude. Eddie feels love again. He steals glances, they both do. He doesn't realize he drank too much. Kiss. They don't. Mike pleads for them to stay. Richie pleads for Eddie to leave with him; he wishes he would've centuries ago. They go straight to their own rooms. Like clockwork, they all find their way back to each other, and then by mike's instruction, their tokens. A bullshit inhaler, of course. He holds his hand like they did as kids as they burn.

Eddie remembers childhood fear in the body of an adult. Neibolt holds terror like a foundation; it shelters it. It appears in the same manner it did at thirteen. When they get split up he's with Richie this time, still beautiful despite demons. It feels too domestic, but he can't run. They're scared to their bones, but he hasn't felt as alive as right now. Richie next to him; he's invincible. Take this, it kills monsters, if you believe it does. You're braver than you think. He goes for the heart, celebration ringing through every crevice of his body. I did it, I killed it. The reflection of his body hitting the floor in the eyes of that which his childhood centered around. He loves him. Why can't he say it. Why can't say it. He's dying dammit, stop crying, just say it. He's being held by warmth. Richie's too quiet, and Eddie can't bear his sobbing to be the last thing he hears. Instead of I love you: I fucked your mom. Instead of struggling tears: strained chuckles. He fades away with his nightmares, first in the arms of the only person he'd ever loved, then with the cold.

Summer.

It ends at the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> My sleeping schedule is gonna be royally fucked after writing this.
> 
> Find me on tumblr // @glassroyalty


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